Silicon-comprising field emitters are currently being designed and incorporated into field emission display devices, and show promise as candidates for electron sources in vacuum microelectronic devices. It is generally desirable to fabricate the emitters to have tips that are as sharp as possible, as such can improve control of electron emission from the tips. For instance, clarity, or resolution, of a field emission display is a function of, among other things, emitter tip sharpness. As sharper emitter tips can produce higher resolution displays than less sharp emitter tips, numerous methods have been proposed for fabrication of very sharp emitter tips (i.e., emitter tips having tip radii of 100 nanometers or less).
Fabrication of very sharp tips has, however, proved difficult. Accordingly, other methods, besides simply sharpening emitter tips, have been proposed for improving electron emission from emitters. Among such other methods are procedures for treating silicon-comprising emitters to convert the silicon to porous silicon, and procedures for treating silicon-comprising field emitters to coat the emitters with materials having lower work function properties than silicon. Such materials include, for example, diamond, cesium (such as, for example, cesiated carbon) and boronitride (the boronitride can be undoped, or doped with, for example, sulfur).
The above-discussed procedures of treating silicon-comprising emitters show promise for improving emission from individual emitters, as well as for improving uniformity of emission across arrays of emitters. Accordingly, it would be desirable to develop methods of fabricating emitters wherein emitter treatments are incorporated into the emitter fabrication processes.